Category: Future

A housing rights activist featured in a 2 Investigates report is facing felony charges in Alameda County for attempting to acquire an Oakland woman’s house through a little-known law called adverse possession.

The only thing of any interest is a fund to neutralise the legacy of ex-Soviet radioactive sites – which pales in significants to the highly toxic environmental and ecological legacy of ex-Soviet industry still to be dealt with.

“Customs and Border Protection drones and the Los Angeles manhunt UK tabloid The Daily Express was the first to report that UAVs would be used to track down Christopher Dorner, writing that the ex-LAPD man was to be the “first human target for remotely-controlled airborne drones on U.S. soil.” A number of American outlets uncritically echoed the “first human target” claim, with msnNOW reporting, “It’s official: The drone war has come home to America.”

I despise these drone strikes because the use of robots to carry out lethal covert missions abdicates human accountability. Children, civilians, wrongly identified threats, legitimate political adversaries of war crime are killed along with enemy combatants as part of the strikes. Battlegrounds and warfare should not extend to every corner of the earth. Being at war with US foreign policy is not unusual globally nor is it ever without provocation. It is the equivalent of an enemy following you home from the battlefield. From a purely military analysis, people within proximity to enemy troops are merely collateral damage in the normal course of every war.

Battlefields used to be places a person could come home from. After a period of time engaged with military resistance to US occupation forces, a targeted individual could plan to spend time at a family gathering. So now instead of leave away from the front lines, the drones come and kill not only him (someone defending his home by participating in military muster against invasion forces in perpetual war against a variety of perceived security threat) but also his family.

No one is safe should they be noticed by the US intelligence industry as a threat to, not the territories of the US but really a threat only to American financial interests for intents, perhaps some arbitrary diplomatic allegiance might also be threatened by these enemy combatants who are targeted.

After all, you can’t invade a country, place the population under occupation, suspend the authority of local law and representative leadership, yet still regard the fighters defending their hometowns as terrorists, right? That would be like breaking in somebody’s house and claiming self-defense when you shoot them for asking you to leave.

“The headline, which msnNOW changed two days later, here is wrong on three counts. First is the factual issue of CBP support to the search for Dorner. Parker Higgins, an activist at Drone Census partner the Electronic Frontier Foundation, suggested early on that this was a “massive drone hoax,” questioning the Express article’s dubious sourcing and suspicious absence of corroboration. Mashable confirmed with Border Protection officials that “CBP UAS [unmanned aerial systems] are not flying in support of the search.” [Update: msnNOW revised its article on February 11, removing the “drone war” sentence and changing its headline to “Report: Fugitive alleged killer is target of police drone” while continuing to cite the Express as an authoritative source. Gizmodo’s article and headline remain unrevised.]

Beyond the first-order factual hurdle, this would not even be the first time that Border Protection UAVs have been used for local law enforcement investigations. That honor goes to a June 2011 incident in North Dakota, in which a CBP drone was called in by the Grand Forks Police Department during an armed standoff to pinpoint a suspect’s location on his farm. That case is currently making its way through appeals. The Department of Homeland Security has lent its UAVs to local police on several occasions since.”

A description of the records you are seeking. The only requirement is that you “reasonably describe” the records. Basically, this means that you must give enough information that an agency employee familiar with the subject would be able to find the records without an undue amount of searching.

The maximum records/reproduction fee you are willing to pay. You should indicate that you want to be contacted beforehand if the fees are going to exceed this amount.

Due to the fact that most of our internal issues on each march and action to date have come from a lack of information on what the tactical parameters of a particular action are expected to be, TAC will be calling for tactical parameters on this and all future FTP marches that may change as we learn and practice our skills in the streets.

Note that these are the wishes by the callers of the march. In the interests of solidarity please respect these parameters. These are being called for this march only. This goes both ways — please be respectful enough of the event to not pursue certain actions at this time if they are being put on the “please don’t” list; likewise, if you are uncomfortable with someone performing an action that is acceptable within the march parameters DO NOT INTERFERE with them. This is respect for diversity of tactics, and also proper solidarity in the face of our common enemy. There will come a day that this practice, discipline and restraint will serve us well as a unit.

If you cannot follow the parameters DO NOT ATTEND. They will be read before the march during the rally. People will be given the opportunity to back out if they feel they cannot respect the tactics, with no loss of face.

I don’t think the military should train recruits to kill civilians. I think it damages a person to end someone out of expediency.

Most people are at least somewhat aware of the struggles some veterans have readapting to normal society. But a question that’s rarely asked is how the wars we’ve fought for over a decade may be affecting our domestic policing. Police departments provide a lot of jobs to former vets. According to GI Jobs.com, a Web site for veterans seeking civilian employment, 80 percent of the Dallas Police Department’s hires over a two-year period were military vets; approximately 20 percent of LAPD officers have military backgrounds.

The image of the truck Hernandez and Carranza were driving brought to mind the terrifying accounts relayed to me in 2008, when I interviewed more than a dozen returning Iraq war vets, many of whom had served multiple tours. Several told me how the Rules of Engagement had shifted between their first and last tours; early on, they were told to fire only on people who posed an immediate threat – Iraqis carrying weapons. Later in the conflict, “force protection” became the overarching principle, and several soldiers told me they were ordered to open fire on Iraqis caught walking in the wrong area or carrying tools that might be used to bury a roadside bomb.

Doesn’t everyone expect to see these ex-military LEO types freak out more often? Most of these deluded men who want to be police are already damaged. When they pass through recruitment, training, corruption, shame, and denial of every day practice within police, they are required to insist on a greater good. When the scales fall from the eyes, some police off themselves, others break down, become senseless to suffering, and some find targets for rage that isolates them from friends, family, community.

The government and law enforcement churn out damaged automatons at best. Fatalistic misanthropes tune their appearance to hide emptiness placed by authority’s insistence on command and obedience. The immediate reaction to arresting a kid for smoking pot is the horrible realization that good people are ruined by the law.

The LAPD has long played a vanguard role in white supremacist policing in the United States. Whether it be the conscious recruitment of racist cops from the south in the 1960s under William Parker (sparking the 1965 Watts Rebellion) or the continuity of well-worn brutal methods under Darryl Gates (sparking the massive 1992 L.A. Rebellions), there has been little new under the sun. Even after 1992, when change seemed for a moment inevitable and when the Bloods and Crips had, themselves, laid down arms and put forth a plan to rebuild the city, this long-needed transformation didn’t materialize. Instead, South Central became South L.A., Gates was canned, and the LAPD forcibly destroyed the gang truce. Nothing had changed.

It wasn’t long before the next scandal. Toward the end of the 1990s, what many had already known became public knowledge: that the LAPD, and especially the Rampart Division, routinely brutalized suspects and planted evidence. As a result of this revelation, the LAPD was charged under the RICO Act (as a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) and placed under the federal oversight of a consent decree that would only be lifted in 2009.

Not coincidentally, “Globocop” Bill Bratton, currently en route to advise the Oakland Police Department, amidst widespread public opposition, is credited with cleaning up the LAPD, and Dorner’s statement appears on many websites alongside a picture of the former officer beaming alongside Bratton (it has emerged that Dorner mailed evidence to Anderson Cooper last week, including a gift from Bratton, on which he wrote “Thanks, but no thanks Will Bratton”).

From rfi eng (March 17th, 2018) Ten years after being rounded up in a well-publicised raid by anti-terror police, defendants in a trial for the alleged sabotage of a rail line did their best to ridicule the prosecution and show their lack of respect for the court this week. The case, which started out as an accusation of a terrorist plot, appears to have bee […]

From First of May Anarchist Alliance By A, First of May Anarchist Alliance – Michigan Collective. Over one million high school students walked out of class on Wednesday, March 14th 2018 in what was the biggest school walk out protests since the Vietnam War. These students have been raised with school shootings being a norm. As they march out of class and int […]

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